Today, today it's culturally acceptable to ridicule, scorn, and otherwise attack men and manhood; to portray men as arrogant, abusive, and controlling. The word 'masculine' is now a derogatory term that means the same thing as 'toxic'. "Men are trash".
The message is that to be a man is to be lesser, or irrelevant, or harmful to society. That there's something shameful about being a man.
"There's nothing wrong with taking men down a peg or two; after all, they rule pretty much everything". Yeah, now what about the overwhelmingly vast percentage of men who will never have a management position or hold office? Whose life is just mediocre? Is it also okay to tell him he's toxic trash?
And sure, the proper response is "don't listen to the garbage". Doesn't mean it's okay to spew garbage.
As for entertainment media, it's a shit-show on both sides -- women and men are both horribly stereotyped.
> The word 'masculine' is now a derogatory term that means the same thing as 'toxic'.
This whole comment was BS, but I’ll focus on one example. This is the exact opposite of the truth, “toxic masculinity” is a common phrase because “toxic” is an adjective that is seen as *adding significant information to the description which is not already present in ‘masculinity’”.
If masculinity were viewed as inherently toxic, “toxic masculinity” wouldn’t be a needed phrase.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
That is a load of bullshit. The phrase is used to shit on all things that make men, men. If it was really a technical term to describe the bad components of masculinity, then there would be an equivalent in terms of femininity, since there are aspects of femininity that can be construed as toxic. I would go out and a lim, and suggest that being overly passive, passive aggressive, and backstabbing are all aspects of femininity that could be considered toxic. You could also consider the perverse side effects of the women are wonderful effect to be toxic femininity
It is dressed up in academic language to mask its misandry.
> The phrase is used to shit on all things that make men, men.
No, its not, and if you think the things it targets “all the thing that make men men”, you have a very sick idea of what being a man is.
> If it was really a technical term to describe the bad components of masculinity, then there would be an equivalent in terms of femininity, since there are aspects of femininity that can be construed as toxic.
The equivalent is, as one might expect, “toxic femininity”. While it gets less attention, the attention it does get is from the exact same people who care the mosf about toxic masculinity.
Please don't do flamewar like this on HN. You normally do an excellent job of avoiding that, even on difficult and divisive topics, so I'm dismayed to see the lapse and I hope it's not a sign of any development in that direction.
You broke the site guidelines here. I understand that the topic is provocative and people have good reasons for their strong feelings, on all sides; that makes it more important, not less, to follow the site guidelines. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd be grateful. Note these:
"Please don't fulminate."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
The message is that to be a man is to be lesser, or irrelevant, or harmful to society. That there's something shameful about being a man.
"There's nothing wrong with taking men down a peg or two; after all, they rule pretty much everything". Yeah, now what about the overwhelmingly vast percentage of men who will never have a management position or hold office? Whose life is just mediocre? Is it also okay to tell him he's toxic trash?
And sure, the proper response is "don't listen to the garbage". Doesn't mean it's okay to spew garbage.
As for entertainment media, it's a shit-show on both sides -- women and men are both horribly stereotyped.